...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation

"David Ball" wrote in message
...

Did they ever do any studies of what beaming all that power through
the atmosphere would do to things like the ozone layer and weather
patterns, or is it so small compared to what we get from the SUN that
it wouldn't make a difference.

Partly the latter. No affect on ozone, and since the frequency chosen is
one not readily absorbed by water vapor (for that very reason) shouldn't be
any significant affect on weather. There may be an affect on the ionosphere
which might annoy some ham radio operators, possibly.


--


Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
By all that you hold dear on this good Earth
I bid you stand, Men of the West!
Aragorn

On Sat, 13 May 2006 09:48:59 -0400, jonathan wrote:



"What began as a desire and need to carry mail by air
became today's global system of passenger airlines."
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/es...rmail/POL6.htm



There can be little doubt that the efforts of the US govt
to jump start commercial aviation has changed the
world substantially and for the better.

The military started off by providing the initial technology,
rikkety Jennys, and some daring pilots. But the govt provided
something else far more substantial to creating the
world-changing industry of commercial aviation.

A market! A cargo! The US Airmail.

So....what is the market/cargo for space?

Water.

Lunar Lander.

Space Station Parts.

Space Station Supplies.

Mars Lander.

Space Station Astronauts.

Food.

Fuel.

Lunar Explorers.

The government currently has a budget for these items. Why not these thing
to start with?


--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @

You seem to be assuming facts not in evidence - the existence of a
space-based infrastructure that needs supplying from space. If you're
talking about selling to Earth-based customers, everything on this list
is cheaper to manufacture or acquire on Earth, or isn't something of
much use.

Cheap desalinization would provide a lot more water than getting water
from space.

There will be occassional hobbyish forays into space, but if you're
talking about -real- space economics, you have to provide a service or
product -for people on Earth- because -that's where all the customers
are-. In those areas where that is possible, such as information flow
and transfer, space investment was there. If space can provide
something else cheaper and better than you can get it on Earth, that
will attract investment too. What it might be I can't imagine, but
where you need to focus energy on is imagining it.

Water.

Lunar Lander.

Space Station Parts.

Space Station Supplies.

Mars Lander.

Space Station Astronauts.

Food.

Fuel.

Lunar Explorers.

The government currently has a budget for these items. Why not these thing
to start with?


--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @

(...US Airmail and Aviation)

The list was what NASA currently (or in the near future) wants to have in
orbit. The list is probably much larger. These things are equivalent to
the Airmail. The Aviation, is private enterprise.

I would think the list for private people is currently shorter.

Satellites.

Tourists.

Experiments.

But, would grow exponentially as price to orbit comes down. The lack of
gravity and nice vacuum would be useful to manufacturing.

On Mon, 15 May 2006 12:56:27 -0700, Ordover wrote:

You seem to be assuming facts not in evidence - the existence of a
space-based infrastructure that needs supplying from space. If you're
talking about selling to Earth-based customers, everything on this list
is cheaper to manufacture or acquire on Earth, or isn't something of
much use.

Cheap desalinization would provide a lot more water than getting water
from space.

There will be occassional hobbyish forays into space, but if you're
talking about -real- space economics, you have to provide a service or
product -for people on Earth- because -that's where all the customers
are-. In those areas where that is possible, such as information flow
and transfer, space investment was there. If space can provide
something else cheaper and better than you can get it on Earth, that
will attract investment too. What it might be I can't imagine, but
where you need to focus energy on is imagining it.

Water.

Lunar Lander.

Space Station Parts.

Space Station Supplies.

Mars Lander.

Space Station Astronauts.

Food.

Fuel.

Lunar Explorers.

The government currently has a budget for these items. Why not these thing
to start with?


--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @

Charles Buckley wrote:

Jim Kingdon wrote:
Derek Lyons wrote:
Do keep in mind that the US Gov sponsored the Airmail program for
multiple reasons - of which 'jumpstarting the aviation industry' only
one, if not a side effect.

Hmm, didn't find much about this in a quick web search. I found a few
mentions of "Kelly Act", the text of the act, and the interesting ways
it was amended later, but not much about the motivations. I don't
think the Congressional Record is online from back then, for
example...

http://www.centennialofflight.gov/es...rmail/POL5.htm

http://www.allstar.fiu.edu/AERO/wings4.htm

Well.. you have to consider that the established commercial interests
of the day were not happy with tax supported and publicly run airmail
services.

The key thing to take away - is that the established commercial
interests in questions *were not aviation interests*. It was the
railroads, whose relationship with the goverment (never entirely
smooth) was in a particularly rocky phase during the 1920's.

Railroads were the original Big Evul Corporations - and the knock on
effects of their defacto monopoly on the US economy from the late
1800's to the middle of the 20th century hobbles the US today. (The
big one being that railroads are the virtually the only form of mass
transportation that are not subsidized[1] (de facto or de jure) at any
level of goverment.)

D.

[1] With the meaningless exception of Amtrak - passenger service was
always more important to the Goverment and the Peepul than to the
roads.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Jim Kingdon wrote:

Still, it does seem like the basic story of the air mail contracts
having a lot to do with getting a commercial flight industry going was
true.

I'm not debating the effects - which are largely undebatable. I'm
debating the *motivations*.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"jonathan" wrote:

Fission is also massively expensive and a typical
reactor can take 15 or 20 years to be built.

The *paperwork* for a typical reactor takes 15-20 years to process.
The actual reactor (and building) takes far less time.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

Rand Simberg wrote:

wrote:
v

A market! A cargo! The US Airmail.

So....what is the market/cargo for space?


That is, of course, the heart of the problem. Where there is a market
- comsats of various kinds - there is substantial investment and
interest; where there isn't one, or where at the very least no one has
thought of one, there's no investment and no interest (in the financial
world).

And there has been about a billion dollars of investment in private
space vehicles recently.

So? There was a massive amount of capital invested in railroads too
back in day. (Much of it lost.) There was also massive amounts of
capital invested in the dot-bombs, (and much of it too was lost).

Furthermore, much of the investment in private space is represented by
a few individuals - not the broader financial world.

(But then, such facts and complications don't fit neatly into a
typical Randian one-liner sound bite.)

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

"jonathan" wrote in message
. ..
A market make in heaven. '

"Earth" is not a *market*. You don't have a clue.

"jonathan" wrote in message
. ..
Besides, I'm not talking about the foreseeable future.

Obviously. If it's as easy as you say, why aren't *you* doing it?